Tangling With Ty (5 page)

“Nicole, is that you?” Suzanne stuck her head out Taylor's door and grinned, her red hair piled on top of her head, her gorgeous lush body zipped into some shimmery black cocktail dress that made her look like a sex goddess. “What do you think?” She spread out her arms and turned in a slow circle. “Is Ryan going to like this?”

Having rarely seen Suzanne in anything other than her usual catering uniform of black bottoms and a white blouse, or her gauzy sundresses, Nicole shook her head in amazement. “Are you kidding? He's going to attack you on the spot.
I'm
attracted to you wearing that.”

Suzanne laughed and pulled Nicole inside. “This is so much fun. Now for you…”

Rule number one, never let them take you inside.

“This is going to be good.” Taylor rubbed her hands together and looked Nicole up and down. “Strip.”

Nicole merely laughed at the command, but Taylor just crossed her arms and waited expectantly. Nicole's smile dissolved. “No. No way.”

“Yes, way.”

“Hey, stop that.” Nicole held on to her shirt as Taylor tugged at it. “Get your paws off me.”

“I got the perfect dress. Don't worry, it was on terrific sale at a discount outlet, since I know how cheap you are.”

“How do you know that?”

“You live here, don't you? The dress is emerald green, sparkly and designed to drive men wild.” She held up a shimmery piece of material that was far too small to possibly be a dress. “It'll show off your great body, though you're going to need a hell of a push-up bra.”

“Gee, thanks.” Nicole pulled off her shirt.

“You ought to think about buying a set of boobs,” Taylor said, making Suzanne choke on her soda.

Nicole glared at Suzanne, who pressed her lips together and wisely refrained from so much as smiling.

“Hey,” Taylor said, lifting her hands. “Just thinking out loud here.”

“Why in the world would I want to do such a stupid thing as buy a set of breasts?” Nicole asked. “To catch a man? I don't want a man.”

Taylor lifted a brow. “If you tell me you're interested in women—”

“I'm not a lesbian, you idiot.” Nicole stepped out of her pants. “I'm just happy being alone, that's all.”

“Yeah.” For a moment Taylor looked inexplicably…sad. Because that was so unusual, Nicole almost
asked her about it, but Taylor held out the green material. “Luckily, as I've always said, you don't have to be celibate to be single.”

“Who said I was?” Nicole looked at the dress in her hands, and realized she had no idea how to get into it.

“So you're telling me you're getting some?” Taylor snatched back the dress, straightened it out and slipped it over Nicole's head. “You're too uptight and grumpy to be getting any. Unless you're giving him his and not getting yours.”

Nicole pulled her face free. “
What?
”

Suzanne cleared her throat. “I think she means maybe you're giving him orgasms but he's not giving them to you in return.”

Nicole divided a glance between the two woman, each watching her with such pity in their eyes, she had to laugh. “You're both nuts.” She yanked the dress down her hips and quickly ran out of material.

“I see Ty looking at you,” Taylor said casually, tapping a well-manicured nail on her perfectly painted lips.

Nicole pretended not to hear that.

“Ty?” Suzanne fussed with the straps of the dress at Nicole's shoulder. “Who's Ty?”

“My architect,” Taylor said. “Remember? I told you about him. But since you were kissing Ryan at the time, you might have missed it.” Taylor never took her eyes off Nicole. “He's tall, dark and sexy as
hell. Not to mention his delicious, eat-me-alive accent.”

“An accent can't be delicious,” Nicole said, and both women laughed at her. “What? It can't.”

“She's ga-ga over him,” Taylor decided with delight.

“We'll have to invite him to the engagement party,” Suzanne agreed.

“What?” Nicole got a bad, bad feeling as she smoothed down the dress. “Now why would you go and do that?” Both women were staring at her. “What now?” Self-conscious, she crossed her arms. “What are you staring at?”

“My God.” Taylor shook her head. “I can't believe it.”

“Wow.” Suzanne sighed dreamily. “Just wow. You're beautiful, Nicole.”

Nicole just stared at them, then laughed.

“You are,” Taylor said softly.

Nicole shot them a last fulminating look, then stalked over to look into the antique stand-alone mirror Taylor had in one corner. What she saw made her jaw drop.

It wasn't often she slowed down enough even to look in a mirror. She dressed for comfort, wore little makeup and had her hair cut short for convenience. If she had to think about her looks, she saw herself in a white coat. Sexless, really.

She didn't look sexless now. The emerald color made her skin glow and brought out her eyes. Even her hair, usually worthless in the way of obeying or looking good, seemed…well, decent. Maybe more than decent. And her body…she actually had one.

“You have to wear it.” Taylor said of the dress that clung to every inch of Nicole's form. The spaghetti straps held the snug bodice up in front, crisscrossed over her slim spine in back, where the dress dipped sinfully low. The hem came high on her thighs, and slipped higher with her every movement.

“You almost look like you've got boobs and hips,” Taylor noted.

“You look gorgeous,” Suzanne said, with a long look at Taylor. “You have such a beautiful body, Nicole.”

“A little skinny.” Taylor sniffed, but then smiled. “But some men go ape for a toned body like that.”

Someone knocked at the front door, and while Taylor went to answer it, Suzanne said quietly, “You really do look amazing. This is going to be so much fun.”

How to tell her she'd rather have a root canal? “I'm not wearing stockings or heels.”

“Okay.”

“I mean it. I—”

“You'll never guess who I found,” Taylor said, coming back into the room. “A man. And just when
we wanted a man's opinion, too. He just wanted to drop off some papers, but…” Smiling the smile of a cat with the canary's tail still hanging out of her mouth, Taylor moved aside.

Ty stood there, looking sweetly baffled. Until he saw Nicole, then all that sweet bafflement turned to heat as his eyes slowly took in the crazy dress she wore.

“What do you think?” Taylor asked Ty innocently. “Good enough for an engagement party?”

“Good enough to eat,” Ty said, the Irish heavy in his voice.

T
HE LAST TIME
Ty had seen Nicole she'd been walking away from him, and the taste of her had still been on his lips. He'd watched her go and decided not to do that to himself again.

No more watching.

Well, he was looking plenty now, wasn't he? Looking so hard he could see her every little breath, which seemed too quick and shallow for her to be half as calm as she was pretending, standing over there in that killer dress.

But hot as that bod was, it hadn't been the dress that nearly brought him to his knees. No, the look in her eyes had done that. The look that said “back off” and “want me,” all in the same flash of those gray, gray eyes.

Suzanne and Taylor were grinning at him proudly, as if they'd personally created the vision standing before him.

“She does look good enough to eat, doesn't she?” Taylor said, clapping her hands. “Just wait until we get on the thigh-high stockings and do-me heels.”

“Okay, I'm done.” Nicole pointed a finger at Ty. “You. Stop staring. And you.” She whirled on Taylor. “No stockings. No high heels that say do me or otherwise.”

Ty did his best to stop staring as she turned her back on him to chew out Taylor, but as he caught a good sight of the rear view, he nearly swallowed his tongue. Now he could see why the stockings would have to be thigh high, the dress dipped so low he caught a peek-a-boo glimpse of her peach, silky-looking panties.

Nicole, rough-and-tumble ready, tomboy, warrior of her world…and she wore peach silky panties. If that didn't completely destroy him, he didn't know what did.

“I have got to get to work,” she grumbled, bending for her discarded clothes and showing more peach silk.

Not that he was looking. Nope. Not looking—

She caught him looking. With a furious glance that singed the hair right off his arms, she stalked by, giving him a quick scent of shampoo and clean, very angry woman.

“Hey, I thought you decided to cut back your hours,” Taylor called out to her. “So you don't kill yourself before you hit the big three-oh.”

“No,
you
decided I should cut back my hours. I decided to stop trying to convince you I'm just fine.”

“You're not fine.” Taylor stood beside a nodding Suzanne for unity. “You live and breathe that job, without time for anything or anyone else. It's not right, Nicole. You're hiding out from life. Tell her, Ty.”

Nicole dared him to say a word with stormy eyes.

He lifted his hands. “I don't—”

“Oh, please.” Taylor pointed to Nicole's face. “See those dark circles under her eyes? Lack of sleep.”

Ty hadn't slept well either, mostly from the memories of Nicole's mouth on his, from the feel of her body beneath his hands, from the little needy sounds that had escaped her throat before they'd broken apart for air.

Under the circumstances, with his own dark circles beneath his eyes, he didn't really feel he had the right to say anything.

“If I want a mother, I'll call mine,” Nicole said.

“Which reminds me, yours came by.” Taylor lifted a brow. “Checked me out. I must have passed muster, as she told me to make sure you get your sleep, eat your veggies and don't take extra shifts at the hospital.”

Ty lifted his own brow at Nicole's impressive and colorful opinion of that. Then watched her very fine ass sashay to the door.

“Don't ruin that dress yanking it off,” Taylor told her. “And use a hanger!”

The door slammed, and Taylor snickered.

Suzanne sighed. “You shouldn't have baited her that way.”

“Are you kidding? If I didn't, she'd never have put the dress on, much less agreed to wear it. And she really does need to eat more veggies, you said so yourself.”

“She didn't agree to wear the dress,” Suzanne said.

“Oh, she'll wear it.” Taylor tossed them both a positive smile. “She'll wear it with bells on.”

Ty was just thankful he wouldn't have to see it. In fact, he was still thanking his lucky stars when Suzanne turned to him and said, “You'll be invited to the engagement party, of course.”

“Me?” Panic was a taste he hadn't eaten in a good long time.

“Yeah. I think you're going to be around a while.” Suzanne gave him a little smile.

Oh, boy. There were matchmaking plans in those eyes. Unintentionally, he backed up, making both women laugh.

“Don't tell me a man who wears clothes as well as you do has an aversion to dressing up like Nicole's?” Taylor said.

“No, but I do have an aversion to being set up.”

“Set up?” Taylor cocked her head to the side. “Most men would be drooling to go out with a woman who looked the way Nicole just did.”

“Not me. I get my own women, thank you. Didn't you want to show me your contractor bids? You wanted my opinion, right?” He could hear the desperation in his voice. “Can we get back to that?”

“We're not talking marriage here, Ty.” When he didn't relax, Taylor just sighed. “Fine. I'll let you in on a little secret I think will help the situation here, all right? Nicole and I? We plan on remaining single.
Forever.
No white dress, no white cake and no diamonds on our ring fingers. If there's any hooking-up going on, it's of the one-night variety only. Follow?”

“But telling him that only gives him an unfair advantage over Nicole!” Suzanne protested.

Taylor kept her amused gaze on Ty. “I have a feeling he's the one who needs the handicap. Hurt her though,” she said casually. “And we'll hurt you.”

“Oh, definitely,” Suzanne agreed.

They weren't serious, Ty thought. They couldn't be serious. He laughed to prove it.

They didn't laugh back.

“Actually,” Taylor said seriously, “if you hurt her, we'll hunt you down and cut off your balls. So…” She clapped her hands and smiled. “Ready to get to work?”

American women were insane, he thought. Completely insane.

 

T
WENTY MINUTES
later, Nicole ran back out of her loft. She needed to lose herself in something, and the first
thing to come to mind had been the hospital. Her mind was now firmly on work.

Okay, not true. Her mind was still wrapped around the way Ty had looked at her in that dress. Oh, man, how he'd looked at her in that dress. Her knees still were a little weak. Who'd have thought a man could have such heat in his eyes? She'd nearly imploded on the spot from the intensity.

But she was absolutely
not
going to waste time thinking about that, or analyzing her reaction to it. She was going to concentrate on work—

She came to an abrupt halt in front of her car. The streets were filled with shoppers and diners, with people who had nothing to do all day other than wander.

But Nicole had plenty to do. And she'd get to it, if sitting on the hood of her car hadn't been Taylor and…and the man she'd just promised herself she wouldn't think about.

Heads together, they were poring over an opened manila file and laughing. Until they saw her.

Well, Taylor kept laughing. But Ty's smile slowly faded. “You changed,” he said.

“Yeah, it's hard to operate in a cocktail dress.”

Taylor, who had her feet propped up on the bumper of Ty's car, which was parked right in front of Nicole's, waved her closer. “Ty is trying to help me
decide on a contractor. These two right here?” She held up two different bids. “They're young and cute. And expensive. But very good at what they do, apparently.” She looked at Ty for approval, who nodded. “And these two…” She switched papers around and held up two more bids. “They're a tad bit older, more experienced, slightly cheaper…but I guaran-ass-tee you, they'll have beer bellies and plumber cracks hanging out the backs of their low-riding jeans, and it won't be pretty.”

Ty rolled his eyes. “Tell me you're not hiring a contractor based on his ass.”

“Okay, I won't tell you.” Grinning, she popped up, hugged Nicole, and started toward the building.

“Well, gee, I guess we're done,” Ty said to her back, standing up himself.

Turning around, Taylor smiled. “I just figured, since Nicole didn't
really
have to be at work, and since I'd bet the bank she hasn't eaten, that the two of you could go out.”

“No,” Nicole said quickly. Too quickly, but damn it, she couldn't help it. Eat with Ty? No. No way.

But Taylor danced her bossy butt into the building and vanished.

Ty reached for Nicole's hand, tugging her close enough that he could look into her face. “Hey,” he said softly.

“Hey.”

“Sorry about upstairs.”

“You mean about staring at me in that dress?”

His mouth quirked. “Not for staring, no. Sorry you were so uncomfortable in it. You looked…amazing.”

“Yeah. Funny what a low-cut, tight number like that does for a man. Did you lose a lot of brain cells?”

He let out one of those slow, dangerous smiles. Dangerous, because she couldn't take her eyes off it. That, combined with his warm hand in hers, and suddenly she stood there on the sidewalk, completely forgetting she didn't want to stand there with him. Staring at him.

“Darlin',” he said, “I lose brain cells every time I look at you.”

His voice melted her all the more. Unfair, very unfair. “Well, if this does it for you…” She gestured down to her military-green cargo pants and plain white T-shirt. “Then you have even bigger problems than I thought.”

His see-all blue eyes never left hers. “It has nothing to do with what you're wearing. Or how you look.”

Oh, God. Why did he say such things? No one had ever said such things to her, and she had no idea how to handle it. If she'd been hands deep in an emergency surgery, or up to her eyeballs in X rays…
those
she could handle.

But this wasn't work, this was far more personal
than work had ever been, and she was at an utter loss. She inhaled a breath and held it.

“Yeah,” he said. “Scary shit, huh? Let's go eat, Nicole.”

“Because Taylor said to?”

“Because I can't get you out of my head. We might as well spend some time together and see where it goes.”

“It's going nowhere.”

He smiled again. “Let's go see.”

“No.” She fumbled for her car door, slid in. “I've really got to go.” She turned the key.

And the engine simply coughed.

She turned it again, with more force, but she got that ridiculous wheezing noise that told her the battery was dead. Again. “Damn it.”

“Sounds like battery trouble.” Easy as he pleased, he opened her door, tugged her out. “Lucky for you, my car runs like a sweetie. I'll drop you off at the hospital, then charge your battery while you're at work.”

“I don't want—”

“It's no trouble.”

Naturally he didn't take her right to work, but stopped at a cute little sidewalk café a few blocks away. “For sustenance,” he explained as he got out and came around for her.

Came around for her.
Nicole stared at him as he led
them to a table, while she tried to remember the last guy who'd opened a door for her.

Or put his hand lightly on the base of her spine, touching her as they walked.

Her skin still tickled. That it wasn't an entirely unpleasant experience had her head spinning. “Who are you?” she said over the table, bewildered, which wasn't a common problem for her.

He lowered his menu and smiled. “What you see is what you get.”

“Why do I sincerely doubt that?”

“I don't know. What about you? Is what you see what you get?”

She glanced down at her plain clothes, ran a finger over the silver hoops in her ear and lifted a shoulder. “I think so.”

“Tell me about the earrings. What do they mean?”

“How do you know they mean something?”

“A hunch,” he said, which she didn't like, because it was true.

How did he seem to know her so well? “There's one small hoop for every year of medical school,” she admitted. Her own personal badges of honor, during a difficult time when she'd been struggling to survive in a fast-paced, adult world while still in her late teens.

With a slow smile that bound her to him in a way she didn't understand any more than the ease with
which he seemed to know her, he lifted the sleeve on his own shirt, revealing the tattoo she'd seen before. It was a narrow band around his tanned, sinewy bicep in a design that was incredibly sexy. Just like the rest of him.

“I got a part of it for every year I made it through college,” he said. “Finished it when I graduated and started my internship in Sydney.”

“Badge of honor,” she whispered, and at this unexpected common ground of a deep, soul-felt connection, she felt herself warm to him in a new, different way.

The waitress came, and when Nicole tried to order just coffee, Ty took over and ordered enough food for an entire third-world country.

“I'm a growing boy,” he said with a shrug and a big, unrepentant grin. “And besides, I promised Taylor I'd feed you.”

“Is that why we're here? Because you promised Taylor?”

His smiled faded, but before he could speak, the waitress came back with bread and butter. When she was gone, he grabbed a piece of bread and said, “We're here because I wanted to spend time with you.” He slathered butter on the hot bread. “And I think, behind all that cool-as-ice stubborn orneriness, you want to spend time with me as well.” He handed her the bread.

“This is
not
headed to the bedroom.” She took his offering because the butter was melting all over, making her stomach growl. “Not yours
or
mine.”

“Of course not.” He sank his teeth into his own piece of bread. “You have to go to work.”